Macworld’s Chris Breen takes a look at Apple’s newly-updated Podcasts app and points out that this is the one Apple should’ve shipped from day one. I agree—the prior version was slow, buggy, a bit clumsy, and had a polarizing interface and I left it for Instacast. While I’m still not sure if I’ll switch back permanently (the iTunes integration looks nice), I will be trying it for the next few days to see if it really is the real deal:

With each update, Podcasts has improved slightly, but version 1.2, released on Thursday, is the reboot that we’ve been waiting for. Playlists (called Stations) have been added, iCloud syncing has been implemented to ensure synchronization between devices (and with iTunes on your computer), and the Now Playing screen is a single unit that blessedly lacks the tape-deck interface…

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